Verner's Pride eBook

Lucy looked a little foolish. “I will tell
you the difference, as it seems to me, between Jan
and other people,” she said. “Jan
is like a rough diamond—­real within, unpolished
without—­but a genuine diamond withal.
Many others are but the imitation stone—­glittering
outside, false within.”

Lionel was amused.

“Am I one of the false ones, Miss Lucy?”

She took the question literally.

“No; you are true,” she answered, shaking
her head, and speaking with grave earnestness.

“Lucy, my dear, I would not espouse Jan’s
cause so warmly, were I you,” advised Lady Verner.
“It might be misconstrued.”

“How so?” simply asked Lucy.

“It might be thought that you—­pray
excuse the common vulgarity of the suggestion—­were
in love with Jan.”

“In love with Jan!” Lucy paused for a
moment after the words, and then burst into a merry
fit of laughter. “Oh, Lady Verner!
I cannot fancy anybody falling in love with Jan.
I don’t think he would know what to do.”

“I don’t think he would,” quietly
replied Lady Verner.

A peal at the courtyard bell, and the letting down
the steps of a carriage. Visitors for Lady Verner.
They were shown to the drawing-room, and the servant
came in.

“The Countess of Elmsley and Lady Mary, my lady.”

Lady Verner rose with alacrity. They were favourite
friends of hers—­nearly the only close friends
she had made in her retirement.

“Lucy, you must not venture into the drawing-room,”
she stayed to say. “The room is colder
than this. Come.”

The last “come” was addressed conjointly
to her son and daughter. Decima responded to
it, and followed; Lionel remained where he was.

“The cold room would not hurt me, but I am glad
not to go,” began Lucy, subsiding into a more
easy tone, a more social manner, than she ventured
on in the presence of Lady Verner. “I think
morning visiting the greatest waste of time!
I wonder who invented it?”

“Somebody who wanted to kill time,” answered
Lionel.

“It is not as though friends, who really cared
for each other, met and talked. The calls are
made just for form’s sake, and for nothing else,
I will never fall into it when I am my own mistress.”

“When is that to be?” asked Lionel, smiling.

“Oh! I don’t know,” she answered,
looking up at him in all confiding simplicity.
“When papa comes home, I suppose.”

Lionel crossed over to where she was sitting.

“Lucy, I thank you for your partisanship of
Jan,” he said, in a low, earnest tone.
“I do not believe anybody living knows his worth.”

“Yes; for I do,” she replied, her eyes
sparkling.

“Only, don’t you get to like him too much—­as
Lady Verner hinted,” continued Lionel, his eyes
dancing with merriment at his own words.

Lucy’s eyelashes fell on her hot cheek.
“Please not to be so foolish,” she answered,
in a pleading tone.